


To Brace Yourself From Falling

by themonkeycabal



Series: Run 'Verse [13]
Category: Iron Man - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers, Thor - Fandom
Genre: Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3440921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themonkeycabal/pseuds/themonkeycabal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Lewis was six years old when his big sister's life changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Brace Yourself From Falling

**Author's Note:**

> I had many prompt requests for something from the POV of one of Darcy's family -- I chose to go with her brother Sam.

Sam Lewis was six years old when his big sister's life changed. He didn't really know what that meant, of course, only that, for a little while, things got sort of weird, and she didn't want to play as much as she had before.

He walked down the hall to her room, Bucky bear under his arm, and a black, plastic bowler hat on his head. The hat came down over his ears, and rattled around his head, but it made him look tough, and he liked that. 

"Darcy?" He stuck his head into her room, and saw her standing in front of her dresser pulling clothes out of it and throwing them on the floor when she didn't like what she was looking at. "Do you want to play Commandos?" 

"No. Go away, Sam," Darcy grumped. 

"Greg can be a bad guy," he offered, undaunted, and walked over to pick up the black garbage can lid she'd painted to look like Captain America's shield. He held it out to her.

"I don't want to play. We're supposed to go to the park, anyway," she muttered. 

"We can play at the park," he said, still hopeful. 

"Not right now, Sam." She gave up on the dresser and moved to her closet, pulling down dresses and throwing them away, too.

Sam looked down at the shield in his hand and squeezed Bucky bear a little tighter. "How come?"

Darcy sighed and turned to look at him. "We're supposed to meet my other dad."

"He can play, too."

"He doesn't want to play."

"How do you know? Maybe he does." Sam stuck out his lower lip and looked up at her from under the rim of his hat. The hat fell farther as he dipped his chin, dropping almost to the bridge of his nose. 

Darcy sighed and walked over to pull off the hat. "Hey," Sam squealed. "That's my hat! I want to be Dum Dum!"

"You're Dum Dum, alright. I can fix it," Darcy told him, then plucked one of her soccer headbands from her desk. She fitted it on his head even as he squirmed.

"It's pink," he protested.

"Nobody will see it under the hat," she said with a huff. Once she'd settled the headband, she put the hat back on. It rattled around a lot less and didn't slide as much. 

"Oh," he said and put a hand on top of the hat, moving it around a little bit. "Cool."

"Yeah, cool. Look, I have to change. Maybe we'll play after we meet my other dad," she said.

"How come you have another dad?"

"Because mom had me before she got married to dad."

"So?"

"So, dad's not my dad. I mean, he is my dad, but he's not my dad in that way."

He frowned. "I don't get it."

"It takes a mom and a dad to make a baby, right?" Darcy said, and he nodded. "So, mom and my other dad made me, and mom and dad made you. See?"

Sam stared at her for a minute, trying to work that out. "So, you're not my sister?"

"I am your sister," Darcy waved her hands in exasperation. "We have the same mom, but just different dads made us."

"Oh," he said. He still wasn't sure he got it, but when Darcy started waving her hands it was time to talk about something else. "Is he nice?"

"I don't know. I never met him."

"How come?"

"I don't know. Nobody will say." She glowered at the dress in her hands and threw it on the ground, too. "Everybody just says I'll understand when I'm older. I'm not a little kid," she grumbled.

"Me neither," Sam told her stoutly. Then he frowned as he still tried to work out the other dad situation. "Dad isn't your dad?"

"He is, he's just not the dad that made me."

"Okay," he said slowly. "Maybe both of them will play with us."

Darcy gave him a look and rolled her eyes. "Maybe," she said, sounding like she didn't think it was possible. "Go away so I can get dressed."

He squinted at her and cocked his head. "But you're already dressed."

"SAM!"

He scurried out of her room.

When they got to the park later, Sam played on the swings with his dad while Darcy met her other dad. He watched the other dad as he played. He was wearing a suit like dad did when he went to work. Only, they were at the park and dad never wore a suit at the park. So that was kind of strange. But, Darcy didn't seem mad or sad or anything. She looked like she was laughing, so maybe it was okay. 

After a while, mom waved them over to meet Darcy's other dad. Sam trailed along behind his dad, hiding behind his legs, a little doubt lingering. There was another man there in a uniform standing next to his mom, but he looked nice and smiled at Sam as they came up.

"Nice hat," the other man said. 

Sam smiled shyly. "I'm Dum Dum."

"I can tell," he laughed. Sam liked that this man knew who Dum Dum was. 

"You can play," Sam told him brightly. 

"That sounds like fun. Can I be Cap?" 

Sam looked over at his sister who was standing next to her other dad shooting little looks up at him. "Darcy's always Cap. She lets me play Bucky now, but I've got this hat, so I'm Dum Dum. Maybe you can be Bucky?"

"I'd like that," the man said and stuck a big hand out towards Sam. "My name's Rhodey. I'm Tony's friend," he nodded over at Darcy's other dad. 

Sam gave Rhodey's hand a firm shake. "I'm Sam."

"It's nice to meet you, Sam."

The grown ups talked for a few minutes and Sam drifted over next to Darcy. He stood on his toes to whisper in her ear. "Is he nice?"

Darcy nodded and looked over at her other dad again. "He's kinda weird, too."

"Oh." Sam stared at the man and looked away when the man glanced down at him. 

"Hey, kid," Tony greeted. "I'm Tony."

"Sam," he muttered back quietly. 

"Sam, good name. You like ice cream?"

Sam looked up and nodded eagerly. "Yeah."

"Cool. What do you say Darcy and I go get ice cream for everybody? Isn't that what people do when they hang out at a park?" Tony looked over at Darcy. She shrugged but nodded back. "Ice cream it is."

They never got around to playing Commandos that day, but he discovered Tony's dad had actually known all the Howling Commandos. It was almost as good as playing.

***

It wasn't really a big deal that Darcy had another dad. Mostly Sam didn't think about it very often. When she was home she was still his sister, and dad was still their dad, and nothing really seemed to change an awful lot. It didn't seem entirely fair that she had a whole other room at a whole other house, and it really wasn't fair that she had all those robot toys. But, he was still winning with the dinosaur toy count. And while Tony liked to buy Darcy presents, they almost always got him something, too. Sometimes Tony would even mail him a box with something he thought Sam might like. He got his very own bowler hat made just like Dum Dum Dugan's when he was seven, and he went as him for Halloween that year. 

He understood he wasn't supposed to mention who his sister's other dad was to anybody; Tony Stark was really rich and really famous. That was easy enough; it just didn't come up all that often. And their dad's parents knew, and his mom's sister, aunt Jo and her husband uncle Hugh. He thought maybe mom's other sister, aunt Donna knew, but he couldn't be sure. So, most anybody who'd ask already knew, and his friends didn't ask because they didn't care, and besides, Jake had three dads, so, it wasn't like it was that weird. So, it wasn't a big secret to keep, really. 

Sometimes Darcy went away with Tony, either to his house for the weekend, or once or twice they went somewhere else on his plane. And Sam thought it was immeasurably cool that he had his own plane. Mom asked him to try not to be jealous of Darcy, but he really wasn't. In fact, when she was gone he got their mom and dad all to himself, and sometimes they'd go to the zoo, or the water park, or to the movies. He almost felt bad about liking that, but then Darcy had another dad she got all to herself, so he figured it evened out. And, besides, they still did things together as a family.

Sam was eight the first time he got to go to Tony's house. Their mom was dropping Darcy off for the weekend, and Tony invited them inside. Then the ceiling talked to them and Sam stared wide-eyed for about five minutes. Though, of course, he tried very hard not to look like he was staring. Still, Darcy laughed at him and when he tried to punch her, she ran. He chased after her, but quickly got lost in the huge house, turned around in the maze of hallways and rooms, until the ceiling talked to him again and told him where to find his sister. Sam hid around a corner and pounced on her when she tried to sneak by. And that was the day Sam decided Jarvis was a-okay. 

Mom let him stay for the afternoon while she ran errands, and he and Darcy and Tony went swimming, though he stayed to one side of the pool while Darcy and Tony tried to drown each other. Mom was pretty firm about not roughhousing in the pool, and Sam liked to listen to his mom. Mostly. Maybe he and Darcy did team up and attack Tony with the pool noodles for a little while. They stayed on the shallow end, so it probably wasn't that bad. 

Sam had fun that afternoon, but once mom returned he was also pretty ready to go home. Tony and Darcy together were kind of a lot to take after a while. He and mom waved from the car, and Darcy started to wave back, but Tony picked her up and threw her over his shoulder and they disappeared into the house. 

"He's an overgrown kid," mom said with a laugh. "Did you have fun?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed with a smile and a yawn. 

"They wore you out, huh?"

"No," he protested with a petulant frown. 

"Well, you can nap on the way back home."

"I don't want to," he grumbled.

"Uh-huh, sure." Mom drove them through Malibu and he watched the hillside slide past and dropped into sleep. 

***

For Sam's eleventh birthday, Tony and Darcy got him a big book on paleontology and an excavation kit. When he, dad, and grandpa Jim went camping that weekend, he tried out the kit. He didn't find any fossils, but he did find a couple cool rocks. Tony, Sam decided, was a lot like another uncle. And like a million times cooler than uncle Hugh, who got him sugar-free candy and a new electric toothbrush.

However, any temptation to think that Darcy had it easy with another dad went right out the door the day she started _slamming_ doors. She and Tony got into some sort of huge fight about school. Sam tried valiantly to stay out of her way. It was tough, though, because the fight lasted for, like, months. Darcy was going to be a sent to another school for math, and while he thought it was pretty cool she was going to college, nobody could say that Sam Lewis didn't have his own smarts — and he was definitely smart enough not to say anything about it to Darcy. He came a little close to her temper a time or two as it was. 

Finally, around Christmas, things seemed to be getting better. The fight had gone on long enough that Darcy just seemed tired by it, rather than cranky. A Chrismukkah miracle, their dad called it, though not when Darcy could hear him say it.

They went to Seattle to Aunt Jo and Uncle Hugh's for the holiday break, and the day after they got there Darcy got a card from Tony with a plane ticket to Japan. So, maybe Sam did sometimes get a little envious. He'd like to get surprise plane tickets to other countries. Still, he swapped envy for greed and begged her to get him a particular toy that wasn't out in the US yet. She seemed a little shell-shocked by the card, and easily promised she'd try and find it for him. 

Then it was a mad scramble to get her passport from home; grandpa Jim had to go to the house and dig through drawers for it, while Darcy, worried about her passport, picked fights with their cousin Marcia as an outlet for her anxiety. It got a little loud at Aunt Jo's for a few days. Though, as far as Sam was concerned, Marcia deserved it. She was The Worst. Being the oldest meant she thought she got to boss everybody around. Sam didn't like that and Darcy liked it even less, but while Sam opted to stay out of Marcia's way and hang with his cousin Bryce instead, Darcy focused on Marcia like a laser beam. And that's when Sam started to realize just what the word 'devious' actually meant. The lightbulb paintbomb didn't go off until after Darcy left for Japan. 

They were back home in California when Darcy returned (and she returned to find she was grounded for a month — a punishment she accepted calmly. Marcia really did deserve it.). Overall, she was in a much better mood and even found the toy he'd wanted — that was awesome enough, but even better was the change in temper. He silently agreed with dad; it was a Chrismukkah miracle. 

***

Sam was fourteen years old and in the middle of struggling through his math homework when Darcy's best friend Rico came into the house and sat down on the couch next to him. Rico looked like he'd just gotten hit in the head, and then maybe been given a million dollars. It was a weird look. Sam watched him out of the corner of his eye for a while. Rico didn't say anything, he just sat there dazed.

"Where's Darcy?"

Rico blinked and looked over at him like he'd just started spouting greek. "Oh, uh, she's washing up."

"She get it fixed?"

"Yeah, of course, you know her," Rico shrugged. Darcy's battles with her jeep were epic, but she'd yet to lose. 

Rico fell silent and Sam rolled his eyes. "What's the story, bro?"

"Weirdness, man, weirdness. Weirdness," Rico muttered and stared at the TV. The blank, black, turned off TV. 

"Meatloaf night," Sam said, trying to either get Rico to talk or go lurk in the kitchen. 

"Best day," Rico agreed with a nod. "Ever, man. Best day ever."

Sam put down his pencil and gave Rico a part-skeptical, part-irritated look. He'd known Rico forever, basically, but this was weird even for him, and Sam always thought Rico was a little strange. Not in a bad way, just, you know, a little strange. And that's when Rico's bewildered state hit him and Sam started laugh. 

"Oh my God, she told you!" He crowed, pointing a finger at Rico and falling back on the couch cushions in his laughter. The guy practically worshipped Tony, and Sam'd wondered how long Darcy would keep the secret from her bestie. 

Rico kicked at Sam's leg and scowled. "I figured it out."

Sam was still laughing and he clutched at his sides. "Holy moley, it took you long enough."

"Shut up, dude. Shut up." Rico grabbed a cushion and threw it at Sam's head. 

"Kids, kids," dad called mildly as he walked through the room to the kitchen. "Rico, are you staying for dinner?"

Sam started to laugh again and Rico shoved a pillow at him and tried to hold him down. "Yes," Rico said as he struggled with Sam. "If that's okay?"

Sam laughed harder and tried to push Rico off him. 

"It's fine," dad said. "Don't break Sam."

Rico gave Sam another shove, then sat back. "Okay."

"Darcy told Rico," Sam called out.

"Told him what?" Dad paused in the entrance to the kitchen.

"I told you I figured it out," Rico grumbled, then he looked over at dad and seemed a little embarrassed. "Who Darcy's other dad is."

"Ahh," said dad, nodding thoughtfully. 

"I won't tell anybody," Rico spoke in a rush. "I swear."

Dad gave him a smile and shook his head. "I didn't think you would. You understand why she never told you?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I totally get it." He frowned and looked a little sad for a moment. "She thought I'd be mad. I'm not, by the way. It's cool. Really, really cool."

"Good. Okay, I'm going to start dinner. Don't beat up Sam too badly."

"How about nobody beats up Sam at all," Sam suggested with another round of laughter, rolling off the couch away from Rico and his cushion of doom.

***

When Sam was fifteen, Darcy somehow managed to get him a week-long internship at the La Brea Tar Pits over the summer. He didn't know who she'd had to grease to get it for him, and she wasn't saying, but it was, honest to God, the best birthday present he'd ever gotten. 

Not even making the mistake of answering Darcy's phone while she was in the shower spoiled it. 

He heard the vibration of the phone over the coffee table and saw Tony's number on the caller id. His thumb hestiated over the accept button, though, when he noticed that Tony's name had been changed to General Jackass McDouchePants. So … they were arguing again. 

Excepting that one big fight, they mostly had little spats that could be about anything from pizza toppings to weirdass robot things Sam had no clue about. They had a new one every week or two, and mostly they both seemed to enjoy it. Like, it was actually fun for them to argue all the time. There were parts of their relationship that he just did not get. Not even a little, tiny bit. Sam liked things way more peaceful than Darcy and Tony seemed to prefer. 

Still, Sam answered the phone, thinking maybe Tony had helped with the internship, and with every intention of thanking the man, greeted him with a hearty, "Yo, Tony!"

"Unless Darcy's voice has unexpectedly changed —"

Sam snorted. "It's Sam."

"Ah, right." Tony let them slip into awkward silence for a moment before speaking again, "Hey, it's summer. You looking for a job, kid? You're like, what? Twelve?"

Rolling his eyes, Sam corrected him, "Fifteen."

"Sure, fifteen. There's an opening in the mailroom."

"Um, with Griselda?"

"Sure. Who doesn't love old Grizzy?"

Sam winced at the nickname. He'd met Griselda once; she'd sized him up like produce, then tried to put him to work for the afternoon. He might not have minded, but work seemed to consist of moving boxes from one side of the floor to the other, and, besides, he and mom were only there to drop off Darcy's suitcase. The look of profound disappointment on Griselda's face when he'd tried to explain haunted him still. 

"Um, no thanks. I think I'll probably work in dad's office. Or, maybe at grandpa Jim's garage."

"Hm, well, whatever. So, where is my wayward spawn?"

"In the shower. Look, I just … well, you know how she got me that internship at the La Brea Tar Pits?"

"She did what?"

"Oh." Okay, so … Tony didn't help. Rico joked that Darcy was a 'fixer', Sam was beginning to understand — she had resources of her own, acquired who knows how, and that she used in awesome and potentially scary ways. She had a knack with people; she could talk almost anybody into almost anything. Hell, she probably just walked into the Tar Pit's museum and said 'my brother wants an internship' and when they said 'we don't really do that', he could picture her smiling in response, and then a half hour later she walked out and he had an internship. "Yeah, for a week. It was my birthday present. Really awesome."

"I'd hoped you'd grow out of that dinosaur thing."

Sam frowned. This was the man who'd got him a book and a kit, and for Christmas one year, a big chunk of rock and dirt that had fossils in it (mom and dad hadn't been thrilled when he started his 'excavation' at the kitchen table). "What's wrong with the dinosaur thing?"

"What's wrong with a real science, huh?" Tony demanded. "Is that too much to ask for?"

"Paleontology is a real science."

Tony snorted, then guffawed, and Sam glared at the wall while he laughed. 

"It is," Sam reiterated, jaw clenched. 

"Sure, sure, whatever you say. I guess there's, like, chemistry involved sometimes."

"Exactly. And biology, and geology, and microscopes, and scanners, and ground penetrating radar, and all sorts of science. It's science out the wazoo. There's so much science it couldn't possibly be more science," Sam told him emphatically, a little heat in his voice.

"Look, if you like playing in the dirt, just say."

"Okay, not cool." Tony seemed to be in a mood, and one that Sam wasn't quite up for, thank you very much. There were days when Sam thought to himself, 'not actually related', and then he thanked God.

"Yeah, alright, alright," Tony said, his voice conciliatory but a little grumpy. "I was hoping one of you would go into a real science."

Oh, now things were clear. Darcy told her dad she wanted to study political science. Sam snorted a laugh of his own, imagining how Tony'd taken that. 

"Yeah, go ahead, laugh," Tony grumbled.

"You laughed at me, it's only fair," Sam shot back.

"What the hell am I going to do with a paleontologist?" Tony grumbled, exasperated, and Sam gaped. 

Tony was Darcy's dad, and that's the space he occupied in Sam's mind. Sure, he'd been included in a number of Tony and Darcy adventures through the years — little things like trips to Magic Mountain, or sleepovers at the house in Malibu — and he always got birthday and Christmas presents from the man, but there was still a sort of one-step-removed feeling about Tony. He was almost an oddball uncle Sam only saw once in a while, and a weird part of Darcy's world that Sam didn't have a lot to do with. So, the fact that Tony seemed to expect that Sam was part of that world, too, was … strange. Kind of nice, really, but still very strange. 

"You do know we're not actually related, right?" Sam asked, bewildered. 

"Your sister is my kid. Close enough."

Sam blinked a few times and tried to sort that in his mind. "Um, well, if you ever find yourself in a Jurassic Park situation—"

Tony laughed again, but this time he wasn't laughing at Sam. "Fair enough. Hey, so, I'm going to let you go. Good luck with the intern thing. Tell Darcy to call me back. Like, immediately. I'm not waiting forever for her to decide where she wants to go. She's on the clock, or we're going to France. Tell her that."

"Sure, done." Darcy's life was really weird, and Sam was okay with only being on the edges of that. When was France a threat? Only Darcy. 

"Good. Later, kid." And Tony hung up. Sam stared at the phone for a second then shook his head and placed it carefully down on the table. 

When Darcy came out ten minutes later, Sam paused his video game long enough to point at the phone. "Tony called."

"You mean General Jackass McDouchePants," she corrected dropping down next to him on the couch, ignoring the phone. 

"Yeah, he seemed to be in a mood. He wants you to call him back or else you're going to France."

Darcy shrugged and slouched back into the couch cushions. "Whatever. Like I care."

"He tried to get me to work in the mailroom," Sam said with a little whine.

"I liked the Ship Wreck. I miss the Ship Wreck," she sighed. "My life was peaceful when I worked there."

"You worked for Griselda."

"What's wrong with Griselda? She was … okay, she was scary, but in an awesome way. Sometimes."

"Only to you. Weirdo."

"Jerk."

"Butthead."

"Assmunch."

***

Once Darcy went off to college Sam's life became infinitely more peaceful. Sure, he missed his sister; not that he would admit it, but he did. He missed long nights playing video games with her, or when they'd go off on a drive somewhere, or when they'd go to the mall and she'd snark everybody and make up stories about them. He really missed having somebody around who could work just about anybody — from store clerks to teachers. On the upside, she gave him her jeep, and life really did fall into some version of normal. 

Still, it was nice when she came home for the summer, even though, much like the previous summer, she was spending almost all her spare time working with Tony. He wasn't sure what they were working on, he only knew it was big and that Darcy'd had to get Defense Department clearance to work on it. Also, he knew that Darcy was Tony's assistant on the project, and that she was two-steps away from strangling him with piano wire (her words). She seemed happy and energized by whatever the project was, though, and her threats of patricide were pretty low-key, if creepily specific. 

Halfway through the summer, the project wrapped up and they were able to spend some more time together, taking in a couple baseball games, and just hanging out. Sam had his own friends and things he did with them, of course, but it was nice to just chill with Darcy. She could be a lot of fun; another thing he'd never admit to her. 

But one morning he woke up to a silent house. That wasn't so unusual, their parents worked after all, and as a sixteen-year old dude it was his prerogative to sleep-in as much as he possibly could. What was unusual was that Darcy — who was the champion sleeper of the family — was not in her room; her door was open and she never left the door open when she was in her room. Nor was she in the kitchen, or the living room, or the garage. As far as he'd known, her plans for the day didn't extend beyond sleeping and being lazy. But, maybe she'd gone out with Rico or Marley or something. 

He poured himself a bowl of cereal and went to the living room and turned on the TV. He found himself an entertainingly stupid reality show on cable and settled in for a quiet breakfast. Until mom showed up before he'd had more than two bites. 

He looked up, startled, when the front door opened. "What are you doing home?"

"Nice to see you, too," she told him dryly, tossing her keys on the table by the door. She looked wrecked. Tired and drawn and her eyes were red-rimmed.

"Are you okay? You're not sick, are you?"

"No, honey," she said with a sigh, taking a seat next to him. "I'm not sick. I just couldn't take work today." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "We got some bad news this morning."

Sam went stiff and his blood turned cold. "What? It's not grandma or grandpa, is it?"

"No, nothing like that. I'm sorry. It's that … well, Tony's missing." Mom took a steadying breath and rubbed a hand over her eyes. "His convoy was attacked in Afghanistan. Darcy got the call about 3 a.m."

Staring down at his cereal, Sam stirred his Coco-Puffs and tried to process that. "Where is she?"

"Rico drove her to the house." 

He glanced up at his mom, at the exhaustion on her face. "Is she okay?"

"I don't know. You know how she is." He and mom gave each other a small smile of solidarity. Grandma Carol said Darcy was like the eye of a hurricane; you might think it was clear skies, but the storm raged off out of sight. Sometimes her temper swirled closer, Sam knew that from long experience, but everything else she kept back. 

"Do you mind if I change the channel? There's supposed to be a press conference."

Sam handed his mom the remote and dipped his spoon into his bowl again, but his appetite was gone. 

They'd missed the press conference, but all the news stations had pushed their normal programming to devote coverage to Tony's disappearance. They showed clips of Obadiah Stane's statement, but beyond that there wasn't a lot of information, just a lot of speculation. It was the Taliban. Or it wasn't the Taliban, it was somebody else. It was for ransom. Or it wasn't. He was kidnapped. Or he was killed. And then a rehash of his life and times — everything from the wild parties to his innovations. 

Sam really hoped Darcy wasn't watching all of this. He didn't always get their relationship, but he knew Darcy loved her dad like crazy. It was kind of unsettling, actually, seeing him spread all over the news as Tony Stark the famous guy. This was Tony who gave him a framed original Howling Commandos patch, and who argued with him over paleontology, and who let them use his box seats at Angels Stadium, and was … just a guy he knew, his sister's father. It was incredibly uncomfortable to hear the detached speculation about how he was probably dead. 

"Can we change the channel?" Sam asked when the reporters started repeating themselves for the third time. 

"Yeah," mom agreed easily, and switched back to the reality show. 

"Should … should we call Darcy?" 

"I called her before I left work. She's hanging in there, doing some PR work to keep herself busy." But mom looked worried and she chewed at her lower lip. 

"This sucks," Sam said succinctly. 

"It really does." Mom let out a long breath and then put her arm around his shoulders. "What were your plans today?"

Sam shrugged and mumbled, "Nothing much."

"Want to catch a movie? Just you and me?"

Sam thought about it for a second and then nodded. "Sure, that'd be good."

"Well call Darcy later, okay?"

"Yeah."

***

Things after Tony disappeared were not awesome. Darcy came home the day after his disappearance, but she was silent. They'd play video games, but she wasn't her usual obnoxious self. She'd go off for 'drives', and Sam had no idea where she went, but she'd come home just as subdued as when she'd left. Rico tried to cheer her up, but he only had limited success. And she'd taken to spending nights at the house in Malibu. Sam commented once on her being all alone there, but she said she wasn't, she had Jarvis and the bots. Only a Stark would consider machines good company, but maybe that's why she did it — they were her father's and she missed him. It was a way to be close to him while he was gone. 

School started up again and Darcy went back to the east coast. She'd call home like normal, but she didn't talk nearly as much as she used to. Sam was worried, a lot. So were mom and dad. Darcy was self-sufficient, their mom insisted, but as far as Sam was concerned that didn't mean somebody shouldn't check on her. They talked about going out to see her for her birthday, but Darcy declared she had too much school work and not to bother. 

The days and weeks slid by with no word on Tony, and even the media stopped speculating. Sam didn't like the mystery and the anxiety of the whole situation, and he tried very hard not to think too much about it. It didn't always work, but some days he could go almost a whole day without worrying about Darcy. 

One foggy morning in November he was dragging himself to the table for breakfast before school when the phone rang. Mom answered and a second later put a hand to her mouth. 

"Oh my God," she breathed out. "Oh thank God. How is he? That's wonderful. Did you call Darcy? Great. Of course. Thank you for calling. Thank you."

Mom hung up and turned to him and dad, her eyes bright and shining. "They found Tony. He's alive."

Sam stared at her for a second then let out a whoop. "I knew he wasn't dead! I knew it! Suck it, Corey!" Corey was an ex-friend. They'd had a fight when Corey insisted, loudly, one day that Tony was buzzard food. The fight escalated until Corey had a black eye and Sam had a fat lip. Dad broke it up pretty quick after the swinging started. 

Dad snorted into his coffee and clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Language. But, you're right. Suck it, Corey." Dad had never really liked Corey. 

They called Darcy later that afternoon, and she promised she was going to come home soon. Still, it was until almost two weeks later, and the day after Tony gave the second weirdest press conference ever, that she came home. Tony'd just announced to the world that he'd become a superhero, and the fallout from that was spectacular. 

She split her time between her two homes, and seemed pretty relaxed about things, maybe simply relieved that Tony was home. Still, Sam noticed that Darcy was was stingy with details about Iron Man and what her dad had been through, and there was something tweaking at her; it was in the shadows under her eyes, and the sharpness of some of her comments. Whatever it was, she was in the process of burying it deep. Oddly, though, it didn't seem to be the superhero thing that was bothering her. Mostly, when they watched the news reports of Iron Man, she winced but also laughed to herself. 

Sam wasn't sure what to think about the whole superhero deal. Well, he was sure that the suit was cool, and Darcy'd even invited him over to see it. Up close it was even more awesome. Tony tinkered away in the background while Sam poked at the armor and played with a gauntlet. 

"Don't blow a hole in my wall," Tony warned, giving him a narrow-eyed look. Sam cast a pointed gaze over at the hole in the roof and the destroyed car underneath. "Whatever."

The weird factor of Darcy's life increased by a billion precent. Sam was seriously glad Tony was alive, but he was also glad, once again, that that weird was not a big part of his life. 

***

Life went on, Sam heard things about Tony and Iron Man from time to time, but with Darcy off at college, and Sam heading off himself, it all sort of slipped into background noise. Even things like the Stark Expo exploding. Once he'd confirmed that Darcy was still safely in New Mexico (though, there was some weird brush fire that scorched parts of the town, but she swore she was fine), and that Tony wasn't dead, Sam just let it all go and resumed his focus on school. 

With growing up and distance now, he was another step removed from Tony. Even if the man did occasionally send him care packages. Tony's idea of a care package was really damned strange. Like, he just threw random shit in a box and mailed it. Could be gourmet cookies, could be a voltmeter, could be a German porn mag, could be all of the above; who knew? 

"What the hell am I supposed to do with a Samurai helmet?" Sam had just received his most recent care package. 

"It's pretty cool," his roommate Robbie glanced over from where he was sprawled on his back on his bed, his book open on his chest, ignored, as he tried to get his pen to stick in the ceiling tiles. Finals were on them, and everything was a world of stress. "Your uncle again?"

Claiming Tony as an uncle was just easier than explaining why his sister's dad kept sending him boxes full of bizarre crap. "Yeah, he's got some weird ass ideas."

"At least he stopped giving you shit about paleontology."

"No, no, he hasn't. I just haven't talked to him in forever." Sam set the helmet down on his desk and stared at it. It wasn't like his dorm room was exactly vast and spacious. At least he didn't send a full suit of armor. Armor. Oh, very funny, Tony. Jackass. Now he had to figure out how to pack it in his luggage to get it home for the summer. 

"He send you any skin mags again?"

"Get your own porn, dude," Sam shot him a glare. 

Robbie held up his hands and went back to throwing his pen at the ceiling. "I was just asking."

Sam looked into the box again and pulled out a box of Pocky and tossed it over to Robbie. "Here, I guess he was in Japan."

Robbie ripped into the box and went to town on the snack. "What's he do, anyway?"

"I don't know," Sam blew off the question with a vague wave of his hand. "Some sort of consulting stuff."

He was saved from answering Robbie's next question when their door banged open and Robbie's friend Gil stuck his head in the room. "Guys, you will not f'ing believe it. They found Captain America. The dude is alive."

"Wouldn't he be like a million years old?" Robbie asked, sitting up, brushing Pocky crumbs off his beard and shirt. 

"Ninety-five," Sam corrected automatically. Robbie and Gil both turned to look at him. "What? My sister and I used to play Howling Commandos all the time when we were kids." He pointed at them both. "Tell me you didn't and I'll call you a liar."

"You and your _sister_?" Gil snickered. Sam liked Robbie, but Gil was an absolute sack of dicks. 

"My sister could kick your ass six ways to Sunday," Sam snarled back. 

Robbie nodded. "She could." He'd met Darcy, when she'd come by for a quick weekend visit after the winter break, before she went to her internship in New Mexico. Robbie thought hitting on her was a good idea. Or, rather, he thought it was a good idea for about three nanoseconds, and then Darcy offered him a wide variety of very creative suggestions on all the ways he could fuck himself. He'd spent the rest of her visit hiding. 

Gil snorted and gave them both a pitying look. "Sack up, guys."

"Darcy would destroy you in about two seconds," Sam said with a matter-of-fact shrug, a little fascinated by the idea of Gil and Darcy meeting. It would be beautiful and terrible. 

Robbie gave Gil a look when it appeared he had something else to say on the subject. "Let it go, man. He's right, she's scary. Hot, but scary."

"Whatever. So, it's on the news. The Captain America thing. I think it was supposed to be some sort of secret, but then the dude was running down the middle of the street through Manhattan, and it got out."

"Okay, but, again, isn't he like 95?" Robbie protested. "Wouldn't it be more like he was pushing his walker through Manhattan?"

"Dunno man, he looks like he's like 25, not 95."

"Funky," Sam muttered and wondered if Darcy'd heard the news. Would they call Tony about something like that? Whoever 'they' are. Howard Stark worked on the project, after all. 

"I guess. It's a trip and a half, though, man," Gil said. "It's on in the common room if you want to watch." He pushed off the door and headed back into the hallway.

"Couldn't really be him, could it?" Gil asked. 

"Dunno," Sam replied, turning back to his Samurai helmet. "There's weirder shit in the world, I guess."

***

Sam was home for the summer and Darcy was in Europe when aliens invaded Manhattan. 

Mom and Dad came home early from work and the three of them sat in the living room watching the destruction and the aftermath. Seeing Tony out there fighting aliens was beyond surreal. Seeing all those other people out there with him was even more strange. Captain America. There he was. For real. Wow. The Hulk, terrifying. A guy with long, blond hair the news reporters insisted was Thor. But, really? Thor? The God of Thunder? Come on. And then a couple of other people the media only got quick shots of, dressed in black and looking small and outgunned — the woman had pistols, the guy had a bow and arrows. Just … so bizarre. And Sam was a little used to weird, but this was a whole other order of magnitude. 

When Darcy called two days later to say she was in Manhattan, Sam ground his teeth and stared up at the ceiling. Of course she was in Manhattan. She was supposed to be in fucking Prague or something. 

"Aren't you supposed to be in fucking Prague or something?"

"Dial back the attitude, pal," she shot back. "I was in Norway. I went to see Jane."

"What's Jane doing in Norway?"

"That's above your pay grade."

"Oh, just bite me," Sam huffed out.

"Relax, dude. You are seriously way too tense."

Sam shook his head. Tense, right. She rolled with the weird, but goddamn it, not everybody was a lunatic Stark. 

"Aliens invaded," he said, still not quite believing his sister could actually achieve this level of blowing off a big deal. She was only too good at that, but this … this was ridiculous. 

"Yeah, and dad and his new pals took care of it. You're welcome."

"Are you kidding me right now? That doesn't freak you out? Not even a little bit? The whole world is freaking out. How is it you're immune?"

Darcy was quiet for a moment and then she sighed. "It was not my first alien showdown."

Sam couldn't think of anything to say to that. He tried to say something but no sounds could work their way out of his mouth.

"The fire in New Mexico?" She continued. "Was not a fire. This was supposed to be classified, but the cat's sort of out of the bag now, I guess. That was when Thor showed up."

"Thor," he echoed.

"Yes, Thor. From Asgard."

"From Asgard."

"Yeah," she said slowly, drawing the word out, like she was talking to a small child or startled animal. "His shithead little brother sent a deathbot from outer space down to kill him."

"Thor has a little brother?"

"Loki? Come on, Sam, pull it together."

"Oh, right, Loki. Sure, silly me for not thinking immediately of ancient fucking stories and thinking instead we lived in a place called reality where Viking gods weren't setting fire to small towns in fucking New Mexico," his voice grew to a shout. He couldn't deal with this level of weird. He just couldn't do it. 

"Okay, you need to chill right the hell now," Darcy said. 

Sam set his jaw in mulish stubbornness. "You said it was a brush fire."

"Technically there was a brush fire. It was just, you know, started by the deathbot."

Sam ran a hand through his hair and sputtered, "How do you live like this?"

"What's the alternative?" She asked, sounding genuinely perplexed by his distress. 

"Normality? Try it, it's not bad."

"Boring." And, God, she sounded like Tony. Sam loved his sister, but their lives had deviated sharply at some point and he couldn't quite put a finger on when. Maybe all the way back to when they met Tony. Except life had been normal for a while after that. Maybe it was more of a gradual thing. 

***

Darcy moved to New York to live with Tony in his giant, ridiculous skyscraper. Sam had no idea what, exactly, she was doing there, but Darcy insisted she was back to being Jane's intern. However, since she'd only had the internship to get the credits she needed to graduate, and since she'd graduated … how did that work? Sam really didn't buy that, and he couldn't quite figure out how Dr. Foster fit into this new mad world they were all living in, but, honestly, he was afraid to ask. There were some questions he just didn't need the answers to. 

Sam didn't see his sister again until Thanksgiving. And, Darcy being Darcy, she couldn't just come home for the holiday like a normal person, no, she brought her new best friend along. Her new best friend who happened to be Captain America. Captain America. Was in his house. Sitting on his couch. Talking to his parents. Captain Freaking America. 

Sam escaped and went to find Darcy in the kitchen — he'd helped cook and set and clear the table, so Darcy got busted down to dishes duty. "Captain America is arguing with dad about baseball."

Darcy looked up from the dishes and thought about it for a second before swiping one finger through the air, as if checking something off of a list. "Well, they've already covered apple pie, so only 'mom' to go."

"Darcy, you don't understand." He threw his hands up in the air. "Captain America is arguing with dad."

She gave him a skeptical frown. "And, what, you think Steve's gonna deck him or something? I mean, they both feel pretty strongly about baseball, but I don't think it'll come to fisticuffs."

Sam's shoulders dropped. She didn't get it. Why was he surprised? He trudged across the kitchen to lean against the counter next to the sink. "How do you do it?"

Raising an eyebrow, Darcy waved to the dishes. "Well, first I fill the sink with hot water—"

"No, jerk. How do you make the weird normal?"

Pursing her lips, she thought about that. "By remembering everything's weird," she said after a second or two. "And if everything's weird, then it's not that strange, is it?"

"It's that easy?"

Darcy laughed and attacked a glass dish with the scouring pad. "No. No, sometimes my life is too weird, even for me. But, it helps to remember simple things. Like, stop calling him Captain America. His name is Steve. Once you get that through your head, you'll realize he's just a dude, and that's more interesting than Captain America."

"I guess," he muttered, not sure if it would be quite so easy for him as that sort of thing always seemed to be for Darcy.

"When you think about Tony, you don't think 'oh my God, it's Tony Stark', do you?"

"Well, no," Sam admitted with a shrug. "But I've known him forever."

"So? It's the same thing, though." She shrugged back, almost mocking him with the gesture. "You know Tony as a person, not a name. Let people be the whole _everything_ they are, not just one little piece of themselves."

Sam stared at his sister for a long moment. How Darcy rolled through life, seemingly unperturbed by almost everything, had always been one of the most perplexing mysteries to Sam. He liked to think of himself as pretty mellow and easy-going, but Darcy took it to a level beyond anything he could even dream of managing. Maybe it was just that she grew up with a father who was otherworldly in his genius and his fame, everything else must seem really bland outside of that; or maybe it was as simple as her being able to see the world in a way he never could. 

Captain America was in their living room, tomorrow Captain America would go with them to dinner at their grandparents, and if there was anything more American than having Thanksgiving dinner with Captain America, Sam couldn't imagine it. But, to Darcy, it was Steve in the living room, Steve would join them for dinner, Steve would ask grandpa Jim to pass the mashed potatoes. And, well, yeah, when he thought about it like that it really wasn't that weird at all. 

"Huh," Sam said finally. 

"There you go." She gave him a solid, encouraging thump on the shoulder. "Now, maybe go break up the baseball fight. If it's still going on tomorrow, you do know grandpa will try to settle it in the 'manly tradition of our people'," she said, tossing up the finger quotes and getting soap bubbles everywhere.

Sam winced. "Oh, right. You don't think grandpa would actually—"

"Has there ever been an exception?" Darcy asked. "Also, I never want to hear another damned word about how Starks are weird, because, really? So, go rescue Captain America from the awkwardness of Lewis family dispute resolution."

With this new way of looking at things, and an internal resolve to try to hold on to that, Sam nodded and straightened up from his slouch against the counter. "I can do that."

Back in the living room, Sam snickered at the mulish look on Captain Amer— no, _Steve's_ face and the passionate one on dad's, as he tried to talk Steve out of following the Dodgers. Shaking his head, Steve started reciting Dodgers history and talking about games he went to, while dad threw himself back in the arm chair and raised his eyes up to the heavens. And … yeah, Steve wasn't that weird. Steve was actually pretty normal. Way more normal than Tony, who would have tried to automate the couch by this point. 

"Okay, Darcy says put a pin in the baseball talk," Sam interrupted. 

Dad frowned, sitting up. "Why? It was just getting good. Steve was on the ropes."

"No, I wasn't," Steve protested with a small laugh. 

"Because," Sam continued, "she doesn't want Steve to have to wrestle grandpa tomorrow."

"Why am I wresting your grandpa?" Steve asked, eyes going wide with alarm and a hint of panic. 

"In the Lewis family, disputes are resolved in the manly ways of our people," dad intoned solemnly. "Armwrestling."

Steve looked like he couldn't tell if dad was joking or not. "Um …"

"Even the women," mom said with a snuffling laugh. "Darcy cheats, though."

"I … huh. I'm not surprised," Steve said. "She's kinda a lot like Tony."

Mom raised an eyebrow. "Only kind of?"

"Well," Steve spread his hands. "There's a lot of her here, too. It's actually nice to see more of her like this. She's got a real easy way with people that I don't think she got from Tony."

"She does," mom agreed with a smile. "And, yes, he doesn't."

Steve grinned and rolled his eyes a little. "They're both a force of nature, though, you can't help but get sucked in. I mean, I've only known her for a couple months, and, well, she's already invited me to a family holiday."

"And we're glad to have you, Steve," dad agreed. "I don't know about the Dodgers thing, but at least you're not a Yankees fan."

Steve chuckled and Sam rolled his eyes. Okay, so everybody was a little weird. 

***

Tony disappeared again at Christmas. And so did his house. Darcy was safely in Manhattan, and she'd told him she'd wait to see a body before she freaked out. Sam accepted the fact that he would never have the same level of chill as his sister. It just wasn't in his nature. 

Tony reappeared, saved the President of the United States, and brought down the world's creepiest terrorist. So … it all worked out, Sam supposed. 

Darcy went with Jane to London the next spring, and when alien elves invaded the city, Sam was completely unsurprised. He just took a steadying breath and waited for her to update her twitter or call him. She did both, and he went on with his life. 

Later that summer, a super secret division of the government Sam had never heard of, was outed as having been a terrorist front, and he watched Steve fighting bad guys around a collapsing building in DC. He knew his sister had to be in the middle of all this somewhere. Hopefully not DC. Of course, when he saw a building fall in Manhattan, and Tony and the Hulk on site, his stomach knotted in worry. Darcy called a few hours later. 

When his sister told him she'd been a part of that super secret government agency — not the terrorist part, of course — Sam ran out of things to say. There were many layers to his sister that he would never see, things she accepted that he didn't understand, and a cold reality that that was simply the way it would always be. 

His sister was destined for a big, and frankly terrifying, life; one she embraced with all the doggedness, bullheadedness, and gleeful insanity of the Stark side of her family. While, Sam was plenty content with wanting to be a paleontologist who enjoyed quiet digs in the desert and a decent lab space. 

Their lives would always be entwined, she would always be his sister, and he would always love her dearly, but life was carrying them on their own paths, and they didn't seem to merge much anymore. It was a little sad, but when he really thought about it, he was proud of her. He was proud of that big, strange life she was living, even if he didn't know or couldn't fathom a tenth of it. Sam wouldn't want Darcy to be any other way than the way she was. 

When he was a little boy he'd followed her everywhere — she'd been his hero, his idol, the Cap to his Dum Dum. It was nice to know, even in world going crazier by the day, some things didn't change.


End file.
